Message in Regards to Cambridge Street Upper School's Report Card

Message in Regards to Cambridge Street Upper School's Report Card

Posted on 11/12/2014

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

We are pleased to provide our school’s “report card.” The federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) requires that districts annually prepare and distribute report cards, which answer important questions about a school's overall performance and contain specific information about student enrollment and teacher qualifications, student achievement, accountability, how a school is performing relative to other schools in the district and the state, and the progress made toward narrowing proficiency gaps for different groups of scholars.

In this report you will find the following important information about our school:

Student enrollment and teacher quality: This section of the report card provides information about the scholars and teachers in our school as compared to the district and the state.

Student assessment on MCAS and other tests: This section of the report shows how our students are performing on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests as compared to the district and the state over time. CSUS generally experienced significant progress in Math and ELA in comparison to the state average.

School and district accountability information: This section of the report contains three important pieces of information:

Accountability and Assistance Levels: Schools and districts are placed into one of five accountability and assistance levels (1-5), with the highest performing in Level 1 and lowest performing in Level 5. Our school has been placed into Level 1 because of our continued growth and our narrowing of the racial achievement gap.

School Percentiles: A school percentile between 1 and 99 is reported for most schools. This number shows the overall performance of our school relative to other schools that serve the same or similar grades. Our school percentile is 44%. This means that our school is performing higher than 44% percent of the middle schools in the state.

Progress and Performance Index (PPI): The PPI is a number that indicates our school’s progress toward narrowing proficiency gaps, or, in other words, helping all scholars reach proficiency and be prepared for success after high school. Massachusetts has set a goal of reducing proficiency gaps by half between the years 2011 and 2017. For a group of scholars to be considered to be making sufficient progress toward narrowing proficiency gaps, its cumulative PPI must be 75 or higher.

To improve academic achievement in our school, CSUS has launched formal after/before school academic support that we are calling Help Sessions. The Help Sessions are:

Math Center for scholars that qualify under the Title 1 program.

Accelerated Math (AMP) Support program for scholars currently enrolled in the AMP class.

Literacy Center for scholars under the Title 1 program.

Homework Center - PM for scholars that want extra help with homework and laptop access to complete their homework.

Homework Center - AM for scholars that struggled with the homework the previous night and want support and laptop access between 7:40 - 8:40AM. (Beginning after Thanksgiving.)

We appreciate your continued support of CSUS. Some of the ways you reinforce your involvement is by encouraging your child’s learning at home; attending progress report / report card meetings and other special meetings; serving as a volunteer in our school or district; and encouraging other parents to become involved.

For more information about our school’s report card, please feel free to contact us 617.349.3050.